Inside Health

ACHES AND PAINS

ACHES AND PAINS; Those Nagging Aches: In War, They Go Away

By JIM DWYER

Published: September 22, 2003

MY doctor takes the well-being of her patients extremely seriously, so when I asked for a few shots because I was going abroad, to cover the invasion of Iraq, she quickly came up with something better than vaccinations to protect me from any distant hazards. She would stop me from leaving New York altogether by bringing a medical indictment of one sort or another.

First, she ordered a high-technology cardiovascular test that seemed likely to trip up a fattish, 46-year-old correspondent. This test, involving a treadmill, wires to the chest, isotopes shot into the arm, another injection of stuff that made the top of my head feel as if it were about to blow off, ate up half a valuable day during the hectic scramble to pack and get to Kentucky to meet the Army's 101st Airborne, the division I would travel with to Iraq.

The results came back O.K. I returned to the doctor so she could kick my tires a few more times.

''What about your neck with the arthritis, or whatever it is?'' she asked.

A bad neck is second only to a bad back as the most boring thing in the world to hear complaints about. It is hard even to get a doctor to feign interest. The sum and substance of my neck story is that it hurts sometimes, then it gets better.

''Right now my neck is feeling O.K.,'' I said.

She forgot to ask about my tennis elbow, but that would hardly suffice to block the trip. She took my blood pressure, which was a little on the high side, but nothing to shock the conscience. She had drawn some blood a few days earlier, but the lab results were pretty normal. Exasperated, the doctor realized she was facing the fruits of her own long campaign of nudging on diet and exercise. She injected me with a dizzying run of vaccinations, then started writing prescriptions -- Cipro for everything from diarrhea to anthrax, and blood pressure medicine. At the last minute, I asked for a steroidal inhaler.

She also proposed one final alternative to the trip. ''If you're having a midlife crisis, why don't you get a girlfriend like other men your age?''

The lives of a few mid-40's men of my acquaintance passed before my eyes. ''Covering a war seems like a lot less trouble,'' I said. Besides, I had a girlfriend. She was married. So was I. To her.

So I escaped New York, medically cleared to wander in the Iraqi desert with the Army, but equipped with a carcass that even in its prime was slightly out of shape.

The assignment to cover the invasion had surprised me. (Had I ever stopped to catalog my midlife career plans, the list would have been topped not with any particular job but with my truest ambition: staying clear of risk to life, limb or extremities.) All physical preparations were entirely coincidental with my modest efforts at keeping fit, which consisted of visiting a gym three or four times a week. The gym is equipped with the latest in treadmills and elliptical training machines, and showers that at full force can drive holes through the Manhattan phone book. And fresh towels. And televisions to look at. And air-conditioning in every square foot.

A COUPLE of months in the desert is something else entirely. The gym reminded me I had a body to take care of. The desert made me forget it. As things turned out, the more demands that the heat, the sand and the wind put on my physical plant, the better it responded, and the fewer demands pushed back at me. Of course, this was not simply desert, but desert war -- which probably moves the bar for complaints to an even higher level.

How different life in Iraq would be first started to come into focus when I arrived at Fort Campbell, Ky., and Maj. Hugh Cate mentioned that he had some of his troops make alterations to a chair for a particular use in the field. They cut a hole in the seat, then applied sand-colored paint: a camouflaged commode. Alas, thanks to military efficiency, this vital and innovative piece of technology did not get loaded onto the cargo ships with the attack helicopters and artillery.

A list of the conditions in the desert should not be taken as complaint, least of all from someone who spent barely seven weeks there, as opposed to many others who were dug in for much longer and more perilous hauls, not to mention those who live in poverty while practically floating on giant oil reserves.

Even so, the circumstances are worth noting. There are no hotels; no beds; no running water; no bathrooms or toilets; no air-conditioners. If sand is your favorite amenity, though, you're all set. Sleeping takes place in a bag that usually, but not always, is off the ground on a cot or on the hood of a Humvee.

During the first several days, I slept in a warehouse at a military camp in Kuwait, with about 300 others. The days were pleasant, until the first windstorm kicked up. By evening, a thin gauze of sand was suspended in the sky and inside buildings, including the warehouse. For the first week or so, people were constantly coughing to clear their upper-respiratory tracts. This condition was known as the Kuwaiti crud. Several of the soldiers advanced from that to infections -- one lieutenant reported solemnly that he had received a diagnosis of ''pneumonia of the stomach.'' He was met with foul catcalls. By the end of the second week, the Kuwaiti crud had largely faded. People were either worn out from expelling sand, or their bodies had found other ways to adapt.